Rediseño y mejora de la arquitectura de la plataforma informática del proyecto “Phishing de Seguridad Cognitiva”

Abstract

This project is a study focused on the refactoring and improvement of an application made for phishing detection training. As part of a cognitive security study, a prototype web application was developed in order to assess people's ability to distinguish fraudulent email messages and measure their overall perception of computer security. Valuable information was obtained for the study using this system; however, several issues with the platform were reported, due mainly to the lack of proper maintenance since its implementation, so it was decided to carry out work to improve the overall quality of the system. A simple methodology was proposed to guide new software maintenance projects based on user requirements and contextual analysis of each component and its inner workings, together with the help of general-purpose software quality metrics and tools. After this analysis, several solutions were proposed to solve the observed defects and the mitigation effort was estimated compared to the effort of a system redesign, starting from its architecture. Considering these factors, a full system rebuild was deemed feasible. An agile development process was used, integrating maintenance as one of the main tasks to keep better control over defects and improvements. Finally, a new application was built with improved functionality and, it is estimated will have a better maintenance profile in the future. This document details the various stages of the entire process, decisions made, specific aspects and obtained results.